About Nitin Pai

Here is an assessment following an email discussion with my colleagues Rohan Joshi & Pranay Kotasthane on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. See Rohan’s post for context.

1. The Pakistani state and the Pakistani society have neither the intention nor the capability (if they have the intention) to take down the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD). It has crossed the line from being a merely extremist terrorist group to a provider of public goods. It acquired the characteristics of a para-state with obvious popularity and social legitimacy.

2. The Pakistani army, on the other hand, does retain the capability to degrade the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. For instance, they could get a hothead loyal to Hafiz Saeed to assassinate Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi or another competing top-rung leader, engineer a rift, cause clashes while promoting propaganda against them. However, given that the Jamaat-ud-Dawa is a key instrument of the Pakistani army’s existential anti-India posture, the army is unlikely to want to damage the JuD.

3. So the best the civilian government will do is play the Schrödinger-Hiesenberg quantum game, where the JuD is banned but not banned. If another party takes over, the JuD will be not banned but banned. It is unrealistic to expect democratically elected civilian governments to act against JuD especially to satisfy India or the United States.

4. Therefore, India’s short-term options should be

to prevent JuD from acquiring greater capabilities. At this moment it is an irregular light infantry. It should not be permitted to acquire more advanced weapons and capabilities.

to prevent JuD from acquiring territory. ‘Non-state actors’ getting hold of swathes of territory from which they can carry out conspiracies and attacks on Indian soil will complicate New Delhi’s national security strategy.

to prevent JuD from acquiring followers in India. In contrast to the 1990s, it is possible today for followers to ‘train’ with the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) without actually having to go to PoK via Karachi via Dubai.

6. There is a convergence of interests between India and the United States, and to a lesser extent with China too, on the short-term options. New Delhi’s outreach to these states should be to arrive at a consensus on preventing the strengthening of JuD. It is unclear if other countries share interests on the longer-term issue of destroying the military-jihadi complex. It might be some time before the United States comes around to this view. For now, the focus on short-term goals will be good enough.

Sowmya Rajaram of Bangalore Mirror interviewed me for her feature article on Sunday. Here is the complete exchange:

1. What, according to you, is freedom of expression (FoE)?

The idea of free speech & expression is to say (write, draw, sing, compose musically etc) what one feels without being deterred by government, politicians, social consensus or popular sentiments. The only exception is the “harm principle” where there is incitement to violence.

Of course some free speech can be defamatory, and those defamed can seek legal recourse for the damage caused to them. But there cannot be any prior restraints on free speech.

2. There are a few matters to consider when talking about FoE– one of them being that it isn’t equal for everyone. Often FoE is different when you’re a disadvantaged minority, and an ideal for the privileged majority. In the case of Charlie Hebdo, for instance, the publications’s cartoons were often violent and deliberately provocative (even distasteful) in a country which did have a troubled relationship with its Muslim minority. So how does one negotiate that?

This is a specious argument — on the contrary, free speech is more meaningful for those who are in a minority, for their voices to be heard. It is more meaningful for those who are weaker, powerless, poor or disadvantaged. Only free speech allows the disadvantaged asymmetric power.

3. You have in the past said that censorship is tied up with issues of intolerance and competitive politics. That may be true, but isn’t censorship necessary in a large, diverse and often fractious state like ours? How does one balance the need for individual FoE with a collective responsibility to peace and freedom?

In ordinary circumstances, there is no case for censorship of any kind. Films could perhaps be classified so that children are protected from adult themes and audiences can know before-hand which films they might want to avoid. You only have to see our films to see how distorted censorship outcomes are: you have films with the most misogynistic themes, celebrating barbaric behaviour, all allowed without cuts. But kissing and nudity are censored!

The only point where censorship is justified is in emergencies — where there is a risk that information flows can impact national security, set off large-scale violence, rioting, stampedes etc.

Censorship to protect the sensitivities of adults is ridiculous, patronising and makes a mockery of our democracy where adults are considered sensible enough to vote, marry and produce children, but not sensible enough to watch a movie or read a book!

These questions turn up repeatedly because we have arrived at some kind of a consensus that something that is offensive ought to be banned. The contemporary roots of this arose with Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, which the Rajiv Gandhi government banned. India was the first country to ban the book! That opened the floodgates for everyone to claim to be offended and get the offending movie or book banned. Since India has hundreds of communities, it is normal for each of them to want to claim the same ‘privilege’ as others.

Showing thin-skinnedness is also a useful political tactic, as it allows a group to demonstrate their political strength.

Individuals identify with one or more communities, and are understandably more vocal in claiming their own ‘privileges’ than in defending others’ rights. So people will engage in whataboutery and yesbuttery. We can’t blame the people, because they are responding to the incentives our public environment has created.

The way out is simply to adhere to the view that nobody’s sensitivities are worthy of protection. I think many of the films, lyrics and songs are in very poor taste, and hence I avoid them. People have the right to change the channel! If people don’t turn up to watch Honey Singh’s shows, I’m sure he’ll change his tunes (or lyrics). People who are offended by Doniger, Rushdie or Socrates don’t have to read them.

4. Many of the ‘hate speech’ laws are a legacy of colonial times when it was deemed necessary to have them to control an essentially “esxcitable”, diverese race. How are these relevant today?

Yes, hate speech laws in the West derive from their colonial excesses, racism, slavery, and of course, the great crimes during the Second World War. We did not have these in India. Our problem is communal, caste and ethnic conflict which is not quite the same thing.

We need not control hate speech. But there is a case to punish incitement to violence based on hatred (or for that matter, any other reason).

5. How much merit is there to the movement for a complete libertarian state where speech is truly free? Is it even possible?

There cannot be a complete libertarian state, as that is an oxymoron. A state involves a social contract where some liberties are traded away for the privilege of enjoying the rest of them. So we give up the right to violence to the state, so that we may enjoy the right to life, property, free speech and so on.

A figure of merit, therefore, is how few of our liberties do we need to give up in order to enjoy the rest. North Koreans give up 90% of their liberties to enjoy the remaining 10%. North Americans give up 10% of their liberties to enjoy the 90%. I think India should aim to move towards the North American standard, rather than the North Korean standard.

6. FoE also becomes problematic when one weighs the consequences of utterances differently. For instance, liberals were up in arms about the ban on Wendy Doniger’s book, in the case of Charlie Hebdo and earlier, when Arundhati Roy was charged with sedition and jailed. But the very same people were also outraged when Honey Singh was to perform in India in the aftermath of the Delhi gangrape in 2012, given his offensive, provocative lyrics that were derogatory to women. Could you talk a little bit about the conflict there?

Again this is a specious generalisation. I’m sure there were liberals who defended the rights of both. The problem is not so much the liberals, but a mass of the population which gives in to populist sentiments. So we’ll have people claiming “Je suis Charlie Hebdo” because it is popular, we’ll have people supporting the ban on pornography, because that is the right thing to be seen saying, and we’ll have people asking Honey Singh to be banned.

The masses have no obligation to be logically consistent, or principled. We, the people, are selective in our morality and our principles. That’s our problem.

7. It is a problematic subject with no easy answers — but is FoE a myth? Does it exist? What kind of approach can one take to the concept?

Of course it is real and it exists. The very fact that we are debating the limits of our free speech is a statement to its existence, its importance and its acceptance in our society. Our only problem is that we want it to be self-serving!

The Indian Coast Guard’s interception of a suspect vessel just inside country’s exclusive economic zone in the Arabian Sea, off the Gujarat coast quickly moved from being a national security issue to a partisan political issue. While politicisation of national security is not necessarily bad in itself, the polarised circumstances in which it is taking place leave no space for a reasoned discourse. As of this writing, online outrage was picked up by some of New Delhi’s rageboys for physical protests outside a newspaper’s office.

While partisan politics takes its course, there are two questions of public interest that need to be examined. First, who were the occupants of the suspicious boat, what were they up to, and importantly, how did Indian authorities assess the threat and authorise action? Second, was the Coast Guard right in doing what it did?

Given what we know, and given what the Coast Guard knew at the time, it is impossible to be certain who was in the boat and what they were up to. From the facts that are not in dispute, it is highly unlikely that they were innocent fishermen. They could have been part of a terrorist operation to ship arms, explosives, people, money, fuel or other dangerous material. They could have been part of a smuggling racket dealing with contraband of a similar nature. They could have been both. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said he thinks they were suspected terrorists. Praveen Swami, quoting unnamed sources–and he has among the best ones in New Delhi–suggests that they were probably smugglers. The Defence Ministry is conducting an investigation and we might know in good time, or–given that there’s no physical evidence left of the boat–we might not.

This brings us to the second question: in the circumstances, was the Coast Guard right to act in the way it did? This is a matter of judgement. After the 26/11 attack on Mumbai, the Coast Guard cannot be faulted for being aggressive in neutralising a perceived threat. There has also been an escalation of tensions along the India-Pakistan border, an escalation of conflict within Pakistan, open mobilisation of the Lashkar-e-Taiba leadership and cadre. The impending Republic Day parade and President Barack Obama’s visit to India as the ceremonial chief guest on January 26th are also factors that raise risks for a threat of any given likelihood. The Coast Guard in this context, in The Acorn’s judgement, did well to neutralise a suspicious boat whose intentions are highly unlikely to be bona fide. There might be questions of international law and precedent, but they are subsidiary to national security.

What, then, should we make of this episode? First, The National Security Council must use the opportunity to review and streamline the process that begins with an intelligence input to action on the ground, on in the water as in this case. Credible mediareports suggest that there were gaps and jumps. Second, the Coast Guard and the Indian Navy must review procedures pertaining to rules of engagement, and enhance training to handle such threats. In a book published two years ago, this blogger had argued that India’s maritime security forces are sailing deeper into an era of ‘violent peace’, and will see a rise in threats from unconventional mariners. Finally, as pointed out in the same book, the Indian government (and this includes the armed forces) need more sophisticated information strategies in order to acquire narrative superiority. In simple terms, this means acting in ways that avoid controversy.

Samanth Subramanian of The National asked me to comment on Vladimir Putin’s visit to India. My response:

Putin’s visit is part of a longstanding tradition of bilateral visits. It comes at a time when there is greater convergence of interests between India and the United States, than between India and Russia. That said, Russia bears greater responsibility for the divergence in relations with India, for it has almost gratuitously pursued an arms-sale relationship with Pakistan. Those sales have little utility other than sending unwelcome signals to New Delhi.

New Delhi should welcome Mr Putin with great warmth and the traditional respect, despite his recent actions. Russia has been and can be a useful partner for India. For his part, Mr Putin would do well to reflect on how Russian industry can take advantage of Mr Modi’s “Make in India” initiative, especially in the defence and technology sectors.

A driver affiliated to Uber, an innovative taxi service, is accused of raping a passenger in New Delhi. The driver has been apprehended, and has been found to have a previous conviction of rape. To ensure such incidents do not recur, the Delhi government has banned Uber.

The Delhi government must go further. It should not stop at Uber. It should ban all fleet taxi operators including Meru, Megacabs and so on. Why stop there? Who checks the criminal records of all the black-and-yellow taxis that operate in the city? They should be banned too. A number of tourist taxi permit holders also run taxi services. Since we do not know if their drivers are checked for criminal records, and are all potential rapists, they too should be banned.

Auto rickshaws must be banned too. For similar reasons. Bus, Metro and train drivers should be caged into their driving compartments every morning and released only when their shifts are completed. The keys of the compartment must be deposited with the local police station.

Even this won’t solve the problem. Data released by the Delhi Police show that only 4% of the arrested rapists were strangers (like taxi drivers) and 96% were persons known to the victim or her family.

The Delhi government needs to go after the 96%. Helpfully, Rukmini S’s analysis in The Hindu tells the Delhi authorities just what to do. Almost one-third of the rape cases heard in court involved consenting couples, where the plaintiff’s parents accused the male in court. The Delhi government should ban relationships between adult men and adult women. Boyfriends should be banned. Husbands should be banned too to ensure the problem of marital rape is solved.

The study shows a large number of cases involved neighbours or acquaintances, as well as members of the woman’s immediate family. The Delhi government should ban neighbours, acquaintances and members of immediate family too. After all, few check the criminal records of these people.

The Delhi government should set an example. It must be seen to be doing something strong to protect women. Delhi’s example should be emulated by authorities in other cities.

No bamboo reeds. No flute.

Afterthought: Policemen, soldiers and paramilitary service personnel have also been accused and convicted of rape. Priests, religious leaders and godmen too. We should ban…

Warning: This post is an example of a literary style called satire. It employs sarcasm. It should not be taken literally. This warning has been issued in the public interest when real life and satire are sometimes indistinguishable.

All manner of players moved into the space created by a combination of the extreme weakness of the Executive and the logjam of the Legislative over the past decade. In stepped ‘civil society activists’, large non-governmental organisations and the judiciary. Of these only the last has constitutional legitimacy and therefore, judicial actions deserve a lot more scrutiny by those who wish to safeguard the Indian republic.

Let’s set corruption and other malpractices aside for now. What should concern the republic is the role the judiciary sees for itself. Instead of concerning itself with its core functions: adjudicating on civil, criminal and constitutional matters, it has entered domains and taken positions that risk further damaging both constitutional balance and good policymaking.

This is about propriety of process, not merits of the outcome. For instance, it made little sense for the Supreme Court to rule that radio spectrum should always be auctioned. Sure, auctions are one of the best ways to allocate scarce national resources, but the absoluteness of a Supreme Court verdict makes it impossible for the government to say, promote innovation in the wireless industry through a different scheme of spectrum allocation. This is just an example: public policies are best made by the Executive because of the need for flexibility and discretion. When policies arise out of Supreme Court judgements, they do so at the cost of undermining democracy, federalism and quite often, common sense.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court announced that it will set up a “Social Justice” bench, for:

To mention summarily, about the release of food grains lying in stocks for the use of people living in drought affected areas; to take steps to prevent untimely death of women and children for want of nutritious food; providing hygienic mid – day meal besides issues relating to children; to provide night shelter to destitute and homeless; to provide medical facilities to all citizens irrespective of their economic conditions; to provide hygienic drinking water; to provide safety and secured living conditions for the fair gender who are forced into prostitution etc. are some of the areas where Constitutional mechanism has to play a proactive role in order to meet the goals of the Constitution. [Quoted from Bar and Bench]

This move is problematic along several dimensions. First, it is yet another “fast track court” among many fast track courts. Fast track courts sound good, but work well when there are very few of them, and used very sparingly. A lot of permanent fast track courts slow down the entire system (and according to Supreme Court’s latest figures, it has around 65,000 pending cases.)

Second, by shunting public interest litigations (PIL) onto this social justice bench, it is presuming the PILs only ought to be about social justice. Surely citizens of India must be allowed to file PILs about other important public matters, which may not concern social justice.

Third, the mandate of the special bench is a massive intrusion into policymaking and sets a particular social agenda in concrete. Even the founding fathers of the Indian Constitution were unwilling to do this, for they rightly felt that every generation must have the freedom to solve social problems in the light of their own wisdom and experience. The argument that the Preamble of the Constitution calls for social justice doesn’t wash: the preamble applies to the whole purpose of the republic, not a specific task for the Supreme Court. Moreover, going by the Court’s logic, will it now also create benches for economic justice, political justice, liberty, equality and fraternity as well, as they are all cited in the Preamble? If not, why single out social justice?

From recent comments and the announcement of this social justice bench, it appears that the Court is concerned that the Modi government is likely to reverse the social justice policies introduced by the UPA governments. Even if this impression is accurate, it is not for the Supreme Court to protect specific ideological persuasions, either its own, or of previous governments. In a famous case on Barack Obama’s healthcare policy, the US Supreme Court noted

Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.[Reason]

That is a fine principle for the Supreme Court of India too.

The judiciary will fulfil its constitutional role if it performs its core functions well. This means dispensing justice, not hardcoding policy, and certainly not acting in ways that “satisfy the desire of society”. The best way to ensure justice—social, political and economic—is for it to speed up the judicial system. For all the Supreme Court’s exertions, there seems to be little by way of fixing this central problem. The Court should detail how it intends to become more efficient and effective, and demand the same of the Executive and Legislature.

Instead of getting caught in the pointless politics of SAARC, India should create a web of bilateral relationships

India doesn’t need the South Asian Association for Region Cooperation (SAARC). India’s neighbours wanted the outfit so that they could collectively pin down their bigger neighbour, something they cannot do individually.

Why New Delhi plays ball with this is unfathomable, for given India’s size, geography and power, it can achieve bilaterally everything that SAARC can achieve multilaterally. From freer trade to open skies, from counter-terrorism cooperation to join management of environmental resources, it is far easier for New Delhi to work out a web of bilateral arrangements than to attempt a big multilateral negotiation. It is hard to make a case for SAARC on the grounds of efficiency and effectiveness of subcontinental cooperation. [See this from the archives] Moreover, there is a lot of slack in the domestic policy environment before the neighbourhood becomes a constraint to India’s growth.

Some argue that India needs SAARC as a regional geopolitical bloc, on the lines of ASEAN or even a European Union. To accept this would be to ignore the history of the subcontinent’s political map looks the way it does. No country in the subcontinent needs regional solidarity to counter foreign powers. On the contrary, every one of India’s neighbours needs a foreign power to counter India’s influence. The dream for a ‘South Asian Union’ on the lines of the European Union is absurd, because Partition and Bangladesh were expressions of desires against being part of a liberal, democratic, secular, plural state. In fact, the EU took five decades to move towards something like the Indian Union (which is what the Republic of India is).

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was off on the right footing when he invited leaders of the subcontinent’s states to his swearing in ceremony. That was an expression of how India can unilaterally act to bring together the subcontinent. The SAARC summit, on the other hand, is at best a waste of time, and worst a perpetuation of an old mistake.

The connectedness of the Information Age made the issue of political rights of expatriate citizens more salient. The question of “should Non-Resident Indians get the right to vote?” was the topic of endless university canteen discussions, Usenet flame wars and online discussion forums before the Representation of People (Amendment) Bill, 2010 was passed to allow Non-Resident Indians to come back and vote in their constituencies. Many NRIs came back to vote in the May 2014 elections, and many others worked in the campaigns.

There are demands for more—that NRIs should be allowed an absentee ballot, to vote from their foreign domicile. This is sometimes coupled with the demand for internet-voting, a feature request that is common to both resident and non-resident Indians. While both these demands enjoy a certain degree of popularity, few have taken a hard look at the implications of doing so.

NRIs are citizens of India, many of who have retained their citizenship despite the lure and the attraction of a foreign passport. They have ideas, knowledge, skills, perspectives, capital and human resources that add to the quality of India’s politics, policy and industry. Leaving them out of the political process is unfair and wasteful. They must have a political voice.

The Election Commission has cited logistical challenges as the reason for not setting up polling booths in foreign countries. However, the real problem is more than just logistics. Absentee ballots have a moral hazard: the absentee voter is not around in the constituency to directly benefit from or suffer the consequences of his political decision. This insulation from the direct effects of one’s own voting decision weakens both the representativeness and accountability of the democratic process. The NRI has insurance too: if he does not like the outcomes in India, he can choose to continue foreign residency or take foreign citizenship. Of course, resident Indians can emigrate too, but it’s a lot more difficult.

Empirically, Diaspora politics tends to focus on the emotional and the ideological, and is often hardline and uncompromising. [Devesh Kapur’s latest paper on the political effects of international migration puts this in perspective]. The resident population has a greater need to balance the emotional with the quotidian and the ideological with the practical, so it makes a lot of pragmatic compromises.

The 2010 amendment to election rules balances, to a certain extent, the electoral inclusion of NRIs and managing the moral hazard arising from it. In economic terms, only those NRIs whose expected value of the benefit of voting exceeds the cost of a return trip to their polling booth will vote. The height of this hurdle protects the resident electorate from the political choices of their expatriate compatriots. It also means that richer NRIs are more capable of crossing this hurdle, and therefore, more likely to affect electoral outcomes in India. This is a price that must be paid to address the moral hazard of allowing NRIs to vote.

Allowing NRIs to vote in Indian embassies and consulates abroad lowers the hurdle. Internet voting reduces the hurdle almost to zero. The moral hazard problem gets worse with overseas polling stations and very acute with internet voting. Therefore, given the nature of dynamic compromises that characterise the politics of a highly diverse, plural India, it is prudent not to consciously stir up the pot by reducing the economic cost of voting.

That’s why internet voting, even for resident voters, is a bad idea. The inconvenience of standing in a queue for the time that it takes to cast a vote ensures that only those who value their vote more than that will turn up to do so. Yes, this system disproportionately favours those who put a low value on their time (in other words, those with lower incomes), but it is fair in that there is nothing to prevent anyone who values the subjective political outcome more than his subjective cost of voting to turn up and vote.

Another problem with absentee ballots is the question of constituency. Which constituency should an Indian citizen who’s lived in New York for 10 years belong to? She might have friends and relatives in one constituency—but putting her on the voters list of that constituency is against the principle of domicile-based voting. Many resident Indians live in one constituency but have family links in other constituencies, but they get on the electoral rolls of the constituency they are resident in. (Some resident voters do prefer to vote in their native constituencies, which the electoral system currently ignores.) Domicile-based electoral rolls are important for representation and accountability, and our New York-based voter might not know (or care) how bad public services are in her Indian native town are for her to hold the elected representative accountable.

Current electoral rules do not address the constituency question. One way would be to create a NRI constituency in the Rajya Sabha and the upper houses of state legislatures, and allow all NRIs to pick a representative who will voice their interests. We might need several NRI seats because different NRI populations have different needs. For a half-serious take on what might result, see why the sun does’t set on the Indian Republic.

It is important that all Indian citizens are included in India’s political system. After the 2010 amendment, a better balance has been struck. Further easing of the rules of voting is not advisable. Hurdles that impose economic costs on voters are not a bad thing—voting should not be made cheap.

Outline of my video address to the Model Youth Parliament, September 2014

Transforming India is a marathon, not a 100-metres sprint. You can’t change things overnight or in months. It takes years, decades & lifetimes. So you need to prepare and pace yourself accordingly. It needs stamina, endurance, determination, patience and training.

I want to offer you an Eightfold Path to Transforming India, and you will realise, to Transforming Yourself.

Step 1. Find the Right Balance between your self-interest and public interest, between selfishness and altruism, between thinking for yourself, your family and for the nation. Swinging to either extreme is dangerous. You must find your own Right Balance.

Step 2. Have the Right Faith, in the moral legitimacy of the Indian Republic. It is the Republic that guarantees our Liberty, that upholds our Pluralism and that protects our Democracy. Do not believe ignorant or ideological critics who run down our Republic. It is not perfect, but it is better than other options. It is up to each generation to strengthen and improve the working of the Republic.

Step 3. Learn the Right Ideas. Take the effort to understand and promote good ideas. Good ideas in public affairs come from the scientific method, from economic reasoning and from open-mindedness. Not from dogma or authority. Beware of your intuition.

Step 4. Do the Right Politics. Politics is not a bad word in itself. It is Bad People who make Bad Politics. Good people can do Good politics. When Good people do Good politics, Politics becomes Better. Join political parties. But don’t give up your Goodness.

Step 5. Right Organisation. You cannot achieve public outcomes alone, by being a Lone Wolf. Gather the right team. Form the Right Organisation. Create and join the Right Networks.

Step 6. Right Contribution. Some people have knowledge, others have money, yet others have time. Contribute what you can. Stand for election. Join political campaigns. Donate money to political parties. Join NGOs that work to improve politics.

Step 7. Right Voting. Vote in Every Election. Every Time.

Step 8. Right Engagement. Keep in touch with your MP, MLA, Municipal Councillor or Gram Panchayat Member. Keep reminding them about the issues you care about. Use online methods, write letters and go and meet them.

I want to congratulate you on choosing to step up and do something for India. Reflect on the Eightfold path and act on it if it helps you. All the very best.

(This is a shortened version of a speech first delivered at the Mahabodhi Society Hall, Bhubaneshwar, at an event organised by the Round Table 53)

The focus on G-20, East Asia and raising India’s foreign policy profile are all the right things to do, and long overdue.

Notes for my television appearance on CNN-IBN at 9am IST today:

The Brisbane G-20 statement is so closely aligned with India’s own growth agenda: India must capitalise on this opportunity.

G-20 should become India’s most important international engagement (as my Pax Indica article from June 2010 argues). What the UN was to newly independent India, G-20 should be for a newly resurgent India. New Delhi should invest in high forums that India is already a member of is more valuable than pleading to enter stodgy old clubs like the UN Security Council.

India must contribute to the Asian Balance because it is in our interests to do so. As China and the United States contest for global power, India must project power in regions like East, West and Central Asia to defend its interests. [This is the central argument of The Asian Balance, my monthly column in Business Standard.]

It is good for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to invest time in international engagements: India’s growth is influenced by the world and the world’s situation influences India’s growth [This is the subject of an ongoing research project between Takshashila and the Hudson Institute]. India’s policy discourse will benefit from the prime minister’s international engagements & exposure.

(Point made in response to other panelists)
Mr Modi’s personal popularity among expatriate Indians and the enthusiasm they have shown around his visit to Australia help elevate India’s foreign policy profile. However, it is important for the media to not hype it beyond a point. It is in India’s interests for Indian-Australians to be good Australians: by being loyal, responsible and successful members of their communities.

INI

The Acorn is a blog on the Indian National Interest, an initiative of The Takshashila Institution, an independent networked think tank on India's strategic affairs.
Takshashila—a non-partisan, non-profit public charitable trust—contributes towards building the intellectual foundations of an India that has global interests. It aims to establish itself as one of the most credible voices in India’s public policy discourse, known for its unambiguous pursuit of the national interest, through consistent high-quality policy advisories.